A twist in my story
by Ayla Pascal
Summary: When Harry hears a knock on his door in the middle of the night, the last thing he expected was a dishevelled Severus Snape on his doorstep


The knock on his door came as a surprise. At first, Harry ignored it. It was the middle of the night and he didn't want to get out of his warm cosy bed to see who it was. There was a good chance that it was some drunken person stumbling home from a party and knocking at the wrong door.

The knocking continued, insistently.

Harry groaned, rolled over and pressed the sides of his pillow against his ears. But it was no help. It seemed like the knocking was getting louder.

With a sigh, Harry got up, pulled on a dressing gown and slippers, shivering slightly at the cold and walked to the door. He opened it and almost stepped backwards in shock.

There, on his doorstep, shivering and looking confused, was Severus Snape.

Harry stared.

He couldn't help it. Snape had been dead for the past five years. It was simply ridiculous that Snape could be turning up at his doorstep right now. Especially since, Harry looked at the man more closely, it seemed like Snape's robes were literally falling apart. Bits of dirt and mud clung to the tattered remains. Snape had dark circles under his eyes, and he was holding onto Harry's doorframe with clenched fingers.

"Help me," Snape gasped, his voice dry and raspy. He teetered for a second, his knuckles turning white as they gripped the doorframe. And then, he collapsed at Harry's doorstep.

Harry looked down. It couldn't be Snape there. It must be some sort of trick by the few remaining Death Eaters that the Aurors hadn't managed to track down yet. The man was probably under Polyjuice or something. Harry bit his lip. He couldn't leave him on the doorstep though.

With hesitation, Harry took out his wand.

-***-

Harry stared at the man on his couch. He had levitated Snape into his living room, quickly thrown a rug over his couch to protect it and deposited the other man non-too-gently onto the couch. "Why are you here?" he muttered.

Snape shuddered slightly.

Harry knew that he should be flooing St Mungo's. It was obvious that Snape was seriously ill. Yet, he couldn't bring himself to move. For one thing, he would have to explain why exactly Severus Snape had come back from the dead.

Harry bit his lip and was about to walk over to the fireplace, when one of Snape's hands shot out and grasped at his robes.

Harry stumbled slightly.

Snape's eyes flew open and he pulled Harry down to eye level. For a man who seemed to be on his deathbed, Harry noticed that Snape seemed remarkably strong. "Don't," he rasped.

Harry hesitated and reached down to prise Snape's fingers away from his robes. Snape no longer seemed to be awake. Harry took a deep breath. If he wasn't going to floo St Mungo's, then he at least ought to check that Snape wasn't going to die on him. With apprehension, Harry leaned over the couch and pressed fingers onto Snape's neck. Snape's skin was cold and clammy to the touch. Harry shuddered and couldn't help thinking that his skin was just like that of a dead person. Harry was somewhat relieved to note the pulse seemed steady. He briefly touched Snape's forehead and noticed there was no fever.

Harry straightened up, walked over to his favourite armchair and settled down into it He needed to know what was going on. Had Snape been alive all these years? Or had somebody been meddling in necromancy? Or – Harry's fingers tightened around his wand – was this some elaborate trick by somebody using Polyjuice.

Harry was determined to find out.

-***-

Three hours later, Harry was seriously considering just throwing a full bodybind spell onto Snape and crawling into bed to sleep the rest of the day away. It wasn't as though he had anything better to do. His relationship with Ginny had broken down almost as quickly as it had started. It had only taken them a few months to realise that they had almost nothing in common and they had both – thankfully – gone back to being friends. Harry hadn't really dated anybody since then. There were a few colleagues at work who had tried to flirt with him, but he had always brushed them off. There really wasn't anybody who interested him.

He had been taking long service leave off work recently. Ostensibly because it had been five years since the defeat of Voldemort and everybody said that Harry deserved a break. However, Harry was taking the time to re-evaluate his life. He had always wanted to be an Auror, but now that he had his dream job, he realised that it wasn't what he expected.

Of course, Harry knew that his childhood expectations were ridiculous. There was no way that being an Auror was as exciting as Mad-Eye Moody made it look, but he still expected something _more_. Something more fulfilling.

Harry toyed with his cup of coffee and looked over at Snape. The man looked almost peaceful on the couch. Sleep seemed to have unfurrowed some of the etched lines in the other man's face. Without the scowl, Snape's face was a lot less intimidating. Of course, the hair was still greasy, and the man looked like he had just crawled out of a grave, but Harry couldn't help but thinking that the man's face was interesting. Not like the insipid twits who seemed to surround him nowadays.

Suddenly, Snape turned his head and opened his eyes.

Harry recrossed his legs, glad that his wand was still in his hand. His hand was a bit sweaty from holding the wand for the past few hours, but least he hadn't been caught by surprise.

"I suppose," Snape said in a rasping tone, "you want to know why I'm here?"

Harry nodded.

Snape pulled himself up and looked down at his clothes. He made a face. "I'm surprised you put me on your couch," he remarked. "I would have expected to have woken up in an Auror Interrogation Room or St Mungo's by now."

"Don't make me regret my decision," Harry said shortly.

Snape nodded. "I'm sure you know by now that I was dead."

"For five years," Harry pointed out. "That's really very dead." He took another sip of his coffee.

Snape looked mildly surprised. "I hadn't realised it had been so long," he said quietly.

Harry raised an eyebrow and bit his tongue before he said something else stupid. "Go on," he said.

"I woke up tonight to find myself lying in a coffin. I was in these robes and," Snape sniffed, "smelling just as atrocious as I do right now. There was somebody standing over me – and before you ask, the person was robed and masked. He said that he had brought me back from the dead to kill you and then handed me your address." He shrugged. "That's how I ended up on your doorstep in the middle of the night."

So it seemed like it had been necromancy. "Who brought you back?" Harry asked before he could stop himself.

Snape glared at him. "I believe I already mentioned the man was robed and masked. It was a man, a tall man, and that's all I could tell."

Harry frowned. Necromancy was one of the darkest arts out there. He didn't really know much on the topic but from what he could remember, when done correctly – and as far as he could tell, it really was Snape in front of him not a zombie – it completely bound the person brought back to life to the person who performed the spell. "Not that I'm not, ah, glad," Harry began, when Snape interrupted him.

"Why didn't I kill you?"

"Yes," Harry said. "That's a nice blunt way to put it."

"I'm not sure," Snape admitted. "Would you like me to try?"

Harry held up a hand. He couldn't remember whether Snape had such a macabre sense of humour when he was alive, but Harry certainly didn't appreciate it now that the man had been brought back from the dead and sent to kill him. "Let's leave it as an academic debate," he said hastily.

Snape looked down at his tattered, rotting robes again.

Harry waved his wand.

Snape raised an eyebrow. Now his robes were still tattered, but no longer rotting and no longer smelly. "I suppose I should thank you for that small kindness." He sneered.

Harry stood up and stifled a yawn. A part of him was wondering why he wasn't taking the threat of somebody out there who wanted to kill him more seriously, but most of him just wanted to crawl back into bed. "You can use that couch," he said. "I'm going to put locking spells on all the doors and windows. I'll decide what to do with you in the morning."

-***-

The next morning, after letting Snape use his shower and securing the other man in his spare bedroom with the strongest locking spell he knew, Harry decided to head off to the Ministry Library. He needed to investigate necromancy. Knowing what Snape had told him, assuming that it was accurate; Harry didn't want to trust anybody. It was possible that there was more than one person out there who wanted him dead.

The library was huge. After waving off a very solicitous librarian, Harry spent over half an hour wandering around before he found the section on Dark Arts. He waved his Auror Pass in front of the door and with a soft hiss, it swung open and let him into the room.

Harry squinted. He knew that this was a room housing some very dark materials, but surely they could have used more candles. As far as he could tell, there were only a few lighting up the room.

From there, it was easy for Harry to find the second on necromancy.

-***-

Three hours later, Harry finally came across something useful. Almost everything was academic texts on the evils of necromancy, but he had found something stuck behind a huge tome on _Necromancy: A Killer_. It was a soft, leather-bound book that fit neatly into the palm of his hand. There was nothing written on the cover, but when Harry opened it, there was scrawled in a cursive script: _Guide to bringing your loved ones back to life._

It only took Harry five minutes of flipping through the book to realise that it was exactly what he needed.

Ten minutes later, he was striding out of the Ministry building, the book snug in his pocket. Security at the Ministry Library was atrocious. Books tended to go missing all the time. The librarians protested that it wasn't negative publicity because the books generally tended to find their own back home to the library within ten years. It was fairly common to see a stray book fluttering around the Ministry steps.

-***-

"This explains nothing," Snape pointed out after looking through the book.

Harry glared at him. "It's obvious that somebody, who wanted me dead, used this spell," he jabbed his finger at the page, "to bring you back to life. And here you are, sitting in my living room." Harry couldn't help but notice that Snape looked far better cleaned up, even though he looked rather ridiculous wearing Harry's clothes. He was far taller than Harry and the t-shirt he was wearing barely covered his stomach. Harry kept on being distracted by flashes of pale skin as Snape moved.

"Then, you should be dead," Snape snapped. "The potion seems accurate. I should have been bound to whoever poured the damn stuff down my throat."

Harry resisted the urge to spit out an angry retort. "Maybe there's some sort of caveat," he suggested.

"Uh huh," Snape said, leaning back on the couch and folding his arms across his chest, regarding Harry through heavily lidded eyes. There was a curious expression on his face. "I can't help but notice that I'm still here in your apartment," he said abruptly.

Harry frowned.

"I would have expected that you would have contacted the Ministry by now. After all, it is fairly momentous news when a former Death Eater comes back to life," Snape pointed out.

"You were cleared of all charges," Harry said, evading the question. He wasn't actually sure why he hadn't told the Ministry yet. "Besides, I need your help finding out who's after me."

Snape rolled his eyes. "I would have expected you to be living in a … nicer place, Potter," he remarked, as he looked around the apartment. "Together with that Weasley girl."

Harry shrugged. "We didn't work out."

Snape was silent.

-***-

When Harry first came across the phrase in the small book, he thought it was ridiculous. Yet, after reading the entire book from cover to cover and not finding anything else, he finally decided to show it to Snape.

"Don't be imbecilic," Snape said wearily. "You've been reading and re-reading the book since when you first got it. Which, I might remind you, was two days ago. You might want to get more sleep, Potter, before you start hallucinating more things."

Harry glared at him. They had fallen into an uneasy truce over the past few days. "Thanks for your concern," he snapped. "But look again. The book was written for people to bring their loved ones back to life. And here, the author mentions that it has the consequence of binding the person's loved one to them for eternity, but only in the case of true love."

Snape rolled his eyes. "Sentimental tripe. The potion works fine. I'm positive about that. True love, or true hate shouldn't make a difference."

"But what if it does," Harry pointed out. "What if you weren't bound to the person because they made the same mistake we made? What if this potion was designed for lovers?"

Snape heaved a sigh. "I understand that your knowledge of Potions is lacking, Potter, so you might not get that _it is simply not possible_!"

"What if it is?" Harry insisted. "I'm not dead, after all. And if the person hadn't brewed the potion correctly, then you wouldn't be alive!"

Snape shrugged. "Let's just imagine for one minute that your ramblings are correct. Does this bring us any closer to finding out who attempted to bind me to him? Does this bring us any closer to finding out who wants to kill you?"

Harry had to concede that point. He couldn't help studying Snape. Was Snape wondering what would have happened if he had brought Harry's mum back to life? Surely that wouldn't have counted as true love either? As far as Harry knew, his mum had never loved Snape. He couldn't help noticing that Snape's hair looked almost clean now that it was away from all the potions fumes. Harry almost lifted his hand up to brush a stray strand away from Snape's eyes.

Harry froze.

He suddenly remembered something Ginny had yelled at him in the heat of an argument. Something about Harry being more in love with Ron than he was with her. Harry had just assumed that Ginny hadn't meant it and she had never mentioned anything like that since.

But, now that Harry was thinking about it, he realised that almost every time he'd seen Ginny in the past few years, she would carefully inquire whether he was seeing anybody. He knew that she was now happily married with a kid on the way. He'd always assumed that she was just wanting him to be as happy as she obviously was. Except, now…

Harry clamped down on that chain of thought.

Snape stood up with one swift motion and walked towards the kitchen. "Coffee," he explained over his shoulder.

Harry watched as he walked. Snape was wearing his jeans. Although they were far too short for him, they fit remarkably well around the bum.

Harry leaned back and closed his eyes. _Shit_.

-***-

Harry found himself unable to stop watching Snape. The man moved silently around the apartment, sleek and graceful. He thought that he was being subtle, but one morning, Snape whirled around from where he was making coffee.

"You're staring at me again, Potter," he said tightly.

"I'm not," Harry said defensively. He quickly looked toward the fridge. "I just came to get some milk."

"I'm not blind," Snape said, in a strange tone of voice. "I've felt you looking at me." His eyes narrowed. "Is that why you've been keeping me here? This is some sort of elaborate joke." His mouth was pressed into a thin line.

Harry frowned. "What, no!" he exclaimed. "What kind of ridiculous joke would this be! There really is somebody after me. Who the hell else brought you back from the dead!"

But Snape seemed to be caught in his own private world. With two strides, he covered the distance of the kitchen floor. Harry took one step backwards but found himself pressed against the wall. "I know you, Potter," Snape said, his words a low hiss, "this is all some sort of game to you. You enjoy keeping me here, under your power."

Harry's eyes widened. "What power?" he managed to gasp. "I haven't even pointed a wand at you for days! I thought you wanted to find out who brought you back as much as I want to find out who wants me dead! We're on the same side here. We want the same thing!"

"All you've done is strut around the place in the past few days," Snape ground out.

Harry raised an eyebrow. Strut around the place? He was beginning to get a strange feeling in his stomach. He wasn't sure whether it was because of Snape's words or whether it was because of the proximity of the other man. "I've been doing no such thing."

"You've been watching me," Snape said, his eyes suddenly meeting Harry's. Harry shivered at the sudden warmth that flowed through him. "I know you have."

Harry opened his mouth but couldn't seem to deny it.

"I know your kind of power game," Snape muttered. He seemed to be thinking, a frown creasing his forehead. Harry took the chance to try to duck under the other man's arm to escape and to find his damn wand, but Snape's hand clamped over his wrist.

"Let me go," Harry managed to gasp out.

He was completely and utterly surprised when Snape bent his head and kissed him. Harry couldn't help the moan that escaped his throat as Snape pressed up against him, pushing him up against the wall. He could feel Snape's cock jutting into his stomach, hard. That morning, if somebody had told him that he would be kissing Severus Snape that day and enjoying it, Harry would have laughed and told the other person that they were being insane.

Yet, here he was. Snape stopped ravaging his mouth for a second to lean over and whisper into his ear, "Now who's in control?"

-***-

Harry woke up to find himself curled up against Snape, his head pillowed on Snape's arm. "Uh," he said.

Snape froze. "I expect that was a mistake," he said tightly. "Please give me a few minutes to dress before you notify the Ministry of my return. They tend to keep a tight track on the results of necromancy." He was about to get out of the bed, but Harry kept a tight grip on him.

"Stop," Harry said. "That wasn't what I was going to say. I was just… surprised at what happened, that's all."

Snape relaxed imperceptibly. "Don't worry, Potter, it won't happen again."

Harry almost threw his head back in frustration. "But what if I want it to," he said quietly.

Snape stared at him.

Harry propped himself up on his elbow. "If the last few days have taught me anything, it's that the Ministry isn't for me. I planned on tendering my resignation come Monday. I want to work on finding out who brought you back to life and who's planning on killing me."

"You realise," Snape said stiffly, "that in my current state, the Ministry classifies me as no better than a house elf. In fact, I believe they have more rights than somebody who was brought back to life using necromancy."

Harry gave him a tentative smile. "I'm sure Hermione can help with that."

Snape grimaced, but his gaze had softened.

Harry settled back down into Snape's arms. He still had questions he wanted to ask, like whether Snape still had feelings for his mum, but they could wait.

Snape pressed a kiss on his temple.

-fin


End file.
